


Wiring

by goingtoalaska



Category: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, Established Relationship, M/M, fairly vivid descriptions of (hallucinatory) injuries
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-22
Updated: 2016-12-23
Packaged: 2018-09-11 01:36:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8947948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goingtoalaska/pseuds/goingtoalaska
Summary: Here's the thing about forgiving someone who has done you great harm: it's the same harm again but this time you do it to yourself – so you're just as bad as them, aren't you?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is heavy and I'm sorry about it. General warning about Bad Relationships, there's sort of abusive undertones here so look after yourself if that's any kind of trigger for you.

Here's the thing about forgiving someone who has done you great harm: it's the same harm again but this time you do it to yourself – so you're just as bad as them, aren't you? 

And Todd never can quite figure out why he let himself do it, why he folded like he did and came back, and he's sure on some grim level that it's the infatuation, that he had a stupid crush on the guy and that's why he forgave him, stupid fucking reason -

and his own body's screaming at him. 

The disease that lay dormant in his blood for thirty-odd years came roaring to life the day he decided to forgive the man who lied to him, manipulated him -

“The universe,” Dirk had breathed into his ear the night they first kissed, when he was dizzy and giddy with the near-miss and the future was full of possibility and starlight, the day he'd escaped from the CIA and they were free and still in danger but free, and together, and that was all that mattered, that everything had coalesced around them this way, “the universe brought us here.”

Well the universe brought him here, too, standing at the kitchen sink with his head bowed and his hands plunged to the elbow in a bag of ice because they'd been burning for two hours now, two solid hours, the two hours (coincidence, a part of him tried to assert, weakly) since Dirk had left that morning. 

“Where are you going?” Todd had asked.

“Investigating. Case work. Very important. 

“I'll come with you.”

“No.” And there was something in Dirk's eyes that made Todd want to punch him – clenched his fists at his sides to still the itching in his palms. Dirk, backing towards the door: “No, no, no need, it's nothing important, just a quick bit of – you know, detective work. Detecting. A bit of detecting. No need for assistance on this one, I'll give you a full report later, alright alright goodbye goodbye have a good day thanks for your time -” and the door had slammed and Todd was on his feet to chase him when the itching in his palms shifted abruptly to burning and he doubled over, biting down hard on screams.

Now there are flames licking up around the ice, god it hurts, there's a kind of wonder in how badly it hurts, how bad his wiring is. He's watching the flame lick against ice cubes and leave them untouched, watching his skin char and blacken and peel over and over and over again, it's so absolutely untrue, what was happening, he knows so absolutely that it's not real and yet -

and yet he can feel the bones in his hands cracking in the heat.

He pulls them out of the ice now, gritting his teeth against the renewed agony – but he knows he's risking frostbite with what he was doing. That was one of the dangers of the disease, the real damage you did trying to combat the fake damage. He brings the flames closer to his face, feels his eyes flicker shut against the heat on his skin. Still the screaming desperate twisting pain. Still the adrenaline and panic coursing through him, making him sick, _your hands Todd your hands your hands are on fire do something your hands oh this is terribly terrible terribly wrong_

Dirk's spare jacket flung across the back of the chair, Dirk's business cards scattered across the dining room table.

When had they had the conversation about living together? Dirk had just sort of insinuated himself. piece by piece. Stayed nights, long dreamy mornings together that stretched out longer and longer until there was no point his going home. They'd only talked about it once. 

“Shall I just sort of – stay?” Dirk had asked, eyebrow quirked.

“Yeah, if you like. We can watch that movie - “

“I mean – sort of – forever. Permanently. Semi-permanently, at least.”

“Oh.” Todd had blinked, thrown off. “Like – move in?”

“Yeah. I guess. Is that too – fast? I don't know. I've not really ever had a lover. Or a friend, for that matter.”

It was very soon. Of course it was very soon. Todd had only lived with one or two lovers before, and each one of those it'd been a year or so dating before they'd thought about it, and there'd been a great deal of conversations, and introspection, and planning, and he'd known them far better than Dirk, and they'd of course been a huge deal less weird than Dirk, and they'd both been on the lease, and discussed what the plan was if they broke up or if things went bad, and as he was thinking all this he felt pain blossom in his stomach, take his breath and his mind with it. He used the last of his resolve to stand up, though it felt as though he'd tear in half, grinned down at Dirk.

“Yeah. Let's do it.”

Walked calmly into the bathroom to assess the damage, phantom blood pooling around his feet, light shining through the ragged hole punched through his stomach. Leaned on the sink and tried to breathe. 

There's a kind of sick clarity in pain. He stood there at the mirror, and he looked himself in the eye, and he let himself imagine what the false hope of a cure would feel like, yanked away from you. Forgiveness as self-destruction, self-destruction as forgiveness. He knew he wasn't doing any of this right, but Dirk brought his scant belongings over and that was that. 

Todd watches his hands burn to ashes, charred black stumps and no power left to twitch invisible fingers, marvels a little at the detail – holds his phantom palms over his eyes and still sees the room somehow, presses the disappeared remnants against the side of the sink and feels a horrible jerk of pain in the “stump”

How awful, how brilliant, how demented and powerful, how twisted and mangled and triumphant the circuitry of his brain.

Try to breathe. 

-

Dirk comes crashing back through the door a while later and Todd looks up from the television and just like that his hands are back, whole and hearty and the throbbing agony is gone and Todd gasps at the pure shock of relief, almost painful in itself, the absence of pain.

“You startled me,” he explains, a little too quickly, but Dirk's hardly listening. 

“Todd, I found a case!”

“Again?”

There have been a few 'cases', lately. Dirk's been jumping at shadows since he got back from whatever happened at the CIA – every animal he sees must have a human soul in it, every oddly-dressed person part of some cult, every overheard phone conversation part of some rich and baffling conspiracy. It's all been dead ends so far, which is a little exhausting, but not nearly as exhausting as hiding the fact that his brain is trying to torture him to death, and at least when Dirk has a 'case' he's not particularly observant. 

He's also out of the flat a lot, which makes it a lot easier to cover the disease that's flared to life in his nervous system. 

He's lying, he knows he's lying, there have been more than a dozen attacks now and he hasn't told Dirk about any of them, and lying by omission is still lying and he's trying to give that up, isn't he, but it's hard to convince yourself to tell the truth when you're also convincing yourself to forgive someone who lied to you, and there's only so much leftover energy once you've taken care of the fits of debilitating agony that your mangled wiring sees fit to deliver you. 

Riding the curious endorphin rush of the end of pain, Todd makes room for Dirk on the couch then curls into his side. He's talking a mile a minute about some strange building he found downtown when he was chasing a 'lead'. He'd overheard a drunk woman on a train yelling at someone over the phone. He'd only been on the train because a 'suspicious-looking pigeon' had landed on the timetable at just the right time. Todd dozes off. 

He revolves back into consciousness some time later. Dirk's shaking him awake, a mixture of concern and reproach on his face. 

“Are you okay? I thought you'd be excited but you fell asleep.”

“Yeah. Sorry. I – slept badly last night.” he sits up, grimaces at the crick in his neck. dirk rubs his shoulder sympathetically. 

“Are you hiding something from me?”

Just like that. Just simple, and direct, and those blue eyes and that all-too-open face, waiting for his answer. And Todd's immediate impulse is to lie, and his immediate impulse after that is to feel guilty as hell about lying, and his impulse after that is to clench his jaw hard. 

A flash of Amanda standing in his apartment, clearly itching to go, one eye on the horizon most of her heart already with the four weirdos who'd smashed up his apartment. He lied to you, so what. He hurt you, so what. You did that too. You deserve him. You deserve to feel like this when he looks at you, feel like you might not know the whole story here, feel like you're never gonna be in control of anything again as long as you live. 

“No.”

Dirk frowns. “Okay. Well. It seems like you are, just a little bit. I just – noticed that you're sort of - distracted -” but he stops, mid-sentence, and he shakes his head hard, and with a kind of fraying sound in his voice Todd's never heard before: “No, that's not it at all. I have a hunch. It's hard to tell you what that is, or what it feels like, but it's a kind of a power I have, and I want you to know when I'm using it and when I'm not. I can't control it, it just sort of happens to me, but I'm going to – I'm going to tell you when it is. Because it's not fair, otherwise.” 

Todd opens his mouth, closes it again. “What – what kind of hunch?”

“Just that something's wrong. I have this idea – this sort of – feeling - that you're tied up, but if I try to help I make it worse. I pull the ropes tighter when I'm trying to untie the knots.” 

“Visions?”

“They're more like – sensations. Like – physical hallucinations.”

And Todd can't help the ridiculous spasm of laughter that rips through him. Dirk frowns at him.

“See? That. That's not right, that's a very odd response. But I don't want to – to pry, because me asking questions is going to – to tighten the knots you're tied up in – so I guess I just want you to know that I know something's wrong, and I'm sorry, and I wish I could help without hurting you, but I don't think I can.”

Todd opens his mouth to speak. 

there's a sound so loud his bones shake -

\- something deep inside his skull bursts, wetly, like rotten fruit - 

\- blood running down the sides of his neck and twin cores of stabbing, screaming pain on either side of his head and silence, silence, silence complete silence he's deaf it's over he'll never hear again and it doesn't matter how hard he tries to find the part of himself that holds still in the face of these attacks, he can't, not now, not with - 

He tries to speak, hears nothing, grabs hopelessly at Dirk who's sort of holding him upright with a look of abject panic on his face. His mouth forms more words, he feels the vibrations in his throat and knows he must be making sound somehow. impossible to know what he's saying. he's yelling, he must be yelling, maybe if he yells loudly enough he'll hear himself, maybe if he yells loudly enough he'll rip his own throat out and bleed to death for real - 

Dirk's shaking him and he gasps for breath, tries to lower a voice he can't hear, and he starts speaking, fast, very fast, no idea if Dirk can even hear him, if any of this is even happening, the pain makes him feel so sharp and clear and sort of cut out of the sky, like he's in some separate void-space where nothing can touch him and there are no consequences to anything, and he talks without hearing or listening about the disease he's now lied about twice, and how scared he is, and how much worse he feels about lying to Amanda about it, and how he didn't tell Dirk because he was angry at him for lying to him and angry at himself for forgiving him so quickly, and how imprisoned and powerless he felt, and how impossible it was that he had to forgive Dirk for lying when he was having enough trouble forgiving himself for lying, and how really, if he was honest, he hadn't forgiven anyone at all, and he was so fucking angry and hurt and lost and -

and the pain's gone and the crushing silence is gone and his own voice is ringing far too loud in his ears and there's no blood pouring out of his head and Dirk's staring at him like he's been hit across the face. Todd's taking deep, shuddering breaths and opening and closing his jaw, feeling the pressure shifts in his ears to reassure him that they're still there.

“Sorry for yelling,” he says, finally, because Dirk's still uncharacteristically speechless. “Dirk?” 

He stands, in one strangely elegant motion, looks down at Todd with his face flickering, almost unreadable.

“I was right,” he says softly, and Todd knows he's talking to himself, and he feels frozen, balanced on some precipice, every move he could make a wrong one, walls still reverberating with raw silence. “I – am going to go. For a while.” 

Todd thinks of what to say a few minutes after the door clicks shut, thinks of grabbing his phone but it's too late and not right anyway. 

He waits all day for either Dirk or the pain to come back. 

They don't.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the other half. There will also be a third half, I think. The warnings from chapter 1 hold here as well, look after yourself.

Dirk knows he's stalling, knows he's on the street for no good reason, knows he's chasing nothing real. There's this itch between his shoulderblades when he's not where he needs to be – the universe has never been particularly overt with its signals as to where he _should_ be, but it's not very subtle when he's somewhere wrong.

The pigeon had been a fake lead. The drunk woman yelling on the train had been a fake lead. All the leads he'd been jumping at recently were fake leads, and he knew that as sure as breathing, but god he just wanted something to chase. He was at a loose end since the Patrick Spring case had wound itself up, and he was frightened that the CIA were going to come back for him, and he hated hated hated standing still because without an external focus to hurl himself against his attentions turned inwards, and inwards was -

well it was uncomfortable. There was still a lot that didn't make sense, in there. Strange disjointed splinters of a person, held together by glue and hope and optimism and the intuition he'd always leaned on and never understood. Impossible to look too hard at himself because the suspicion began to form that there was nothing there at all. He was what happened to him. 

“I am what I say I am,” he mutters to himself, draws a sidelong glance from a passerby. He's sitting on a bench a forty minute walk from Todd's apartment. His apartment too, now, he supposes – still not used to living there. Still not used to living here at all, actually, for all that it's been – how long has it been? 

Bad road to go down. Stay in the now. Live for the moment. Tap into the impulse, breathe in and out in the swirling chaos of existence, see what lights up -

Nothing. 

Nothing lights up. He's just a man on a bench. Dirk doesn't like being a man on a bench.

“Where am I meant to go?” he mutters to himself, pitching his voice low. “You can't just tell me I'm in the wrong place and not – and what's wrong with Todd, for that matter? I know there's something. I know you keep – keep trying to tell me too much about him, more than he'd want.”

That was a dark road to go down too. He always flinched at the word 'psychic', hated it being thrown around. It sounded soft, gentle. Psychic. Like thoughts and feelings were radio broadcasts you could just tune in on. What it felt like was quicksand, like your feet in those dreams where you tried to run but couldn't get moving. What it felt like was violence. No wonder the Rowdy 3 spent so much time beating things up.

“I don't care if it's what you want, it's not right,” he mutters again, trying not to move his lips. “Show me where to go. Show me what to do. Give me a case. Give me a mystery to solve, not a person to – get trapped in.”

That's the problem, of course, how he feels about Todd – he glows like a beacon, even now, even miles away Dirk knows where he is without thinking, can just feel him on the spectrum of existence. A fixed point of warmth and light and hearth and home. More and more it's a conscious effort not to fall into him completely. Has to keep moving, keep talking about nonsense, throw himself off his axis again and again until another day's over and he's exhausted enough to sleep without his mind straying into places it doesn't belong. Half a dozen books of extra-challenging cryptic crosswords stored around Todd's apartment. Keeping multiple different counts going in his head – how many steps north he's taken, the square root of how many steps south, how many times he's used a word with seven letters in it, how many prime number are divisible by the number of breaths he's taken since Todd last laughed at one of his stupid jokes -

White noise. Static. Drowns out the grim inevitability that he's going to go somewhere he doesn't belong. It's not easy to keep friends when you're (a mindreader a freak a thought-raider an atrocity an abomination) psychic. Always surrounded by disaster and always alone. That hadn't changed, even being with Todd hadn't changed that, and he can feel himself smiling even though he also feels like he's going to cry. 

Falling for his assistant had not been part of the plan. He didn't tend to fall for people very often. He was never around them for long enough. But it had been so singularly devastating when Todd had told him he didn't want to see him any more. He'd heard it before – dozens of times, he'd heard that, and he understood, he brought a perfect storm of chaos into the lives he touched and nobody owed it to him to stay in that mess any longer than they needed to. But it had sent a crack skating across the surface of his heart to hear Todd say it, to _feel_ Todd say it and mean it like he had. That had been when he knew, knew properly that there was more than friendship to the way he felt about Todd.

Bad timing, really.

But Todd had forgiven him, and come back, and even rescued him from the CIA, of all things (and although admittedly that had mostly been Farah's doing, Dirk still appreciated the effort.) And that night – the night of the escape, battered and windswept but free, they'd stood under the stars and looked at each other, and - 

oh, he was ashamed, ashamed of himself for that but he'd been so tired, he hadn't slept in two days and there was only so much left in the tank, and he'd slipped for a moment, and if he was honest, if he was really, truly honest, a part of him had let it happen, a part of him hadn't mended the breach quite as quickly as it could have -

and his face had stilled and his mind had quietened and that door, the door he spent so much time wedging shut with everything at his disposal, had just slipped open, and a burst of light and sound and pressure had washed over him in a wave

The guilt had been immediate and ferocious but it had been overwhelmed completely by the sharp joyful realization that among the messy chaos that was a human consciousness, he'd heard/felt/breathed in something he recognized – (the feeling at the top of a rollercoaster) (the smell of warm summer air) (the sweet ache of being nearly home but not quite) - something that resonated with the feeling in his own chest, and he'd swept Todd into his arms and kissed him until he'd almost forgotten what he'd done. 

“You remember now, though, don't you,” he murmurs to himself now, bitterly. “Need to tell him. Need to apologize. Need to tell him what you can do. Properly.” He'd tried, back before everything had gotten so messy, back when they were treasure-hunting in the mountains and everything was fun and exciting and okay – but only because Todd had pressed him, and he hadn't told the real truth. Not now, he'd thought to himself. Don't scare off your only friend just yet. “Bloody coward. Sitting on a bench. Running away from it.” Selfish, really. So scared that Todd would decide they weren't friends, again, like he had when he'd found out how Dirk had lied to him. The truth was frightening, and hard, and awful – nobody wanted it, it didn't make anyone happy, it drove people away in droves and he hated it. Hated the need to tell it. Hated the prickling in his stomach that told him he was doing something terribly, terribly wrong every time he met Todd's eyes.

And they were something more than friends, weren't they? Honesty, and trust, and communication – they were just hollow, empty words, catchphrases about relationships that he'd never properly understood. There was a lot he'd never learned, a lot of holes left in him. That's what growing up as a science experiment did to a person, he supposed, made them less of a person. No substance to him, just a cloud of impulse and intuition and – desire, jesus, all he wanted was to be liked, loved, part of something, curled in bed with Todd he felt like a complete being and yes that was selfish and terrible but maybe if he tried hard enough it would be – okay, somehow, it would just be okay.

He couldn't go on jumping at shadows to get out of the apartment, at any rate.

And there it was, the gathered impulse, the light that went on when it was time to do something. He sprang off the bench, nearly crashed into a crowd of passersby, and set off home, long strides bearing him back toward where he needed to be. Talk to Todd. Tell him the truth. 

But on the way up the stairs to the flat he can feel it again, the bad thing, pulsing through the walls and as hard as he works to close that off it's like trying not to eavesdrop on a conversation that's being shouted inches from your face. (Thick, fat power cables, taut with electricity, severed and whipping back and forth, sparks cracking and snapping) (the sensation of grinding your teeth hard enough to snap them) (the sick, ugly flavour of lying) and he's on edge when he steps through the door and ashamed enough of what he's already overheard that without even meaning to he's nattering away about the entirely false case he's manufactured. The bad thing is quiet, at least, but he talks a little too loud just in case. 

Todd falls asleep, and Dirk takes the opportunity to get himself together. He's resolved, when he wakes Todd up, resolved – but those blue eyes stop his tongue, drive him back into falsehoods, god all he wants is for Todd to be happy and how on earth will telling him he's (mutant freak monster) psychic help with that? 

But he does it. It's hard, and it hurts, but he does it – and he can't help but opening up just a little, just enough to hear/feel a response, because facial expressions aren't enough, and -

(the crunching sound of a bone snapping) (the sick-soft-sweet of biting into a rotten apple) (pillow-thick black senseless nothing-dark)

\- it hits him so hard he nearly passes out, slams every door shut he can, he's reached out blindly to steady himself against Todd but he quickly turns that into a gesture of support because Todd's (obviously) in an awful state, he's half-shouting and Dirk's trying to listen but he's still reeling and it's good, in some ways, it's good to know what's wrong, that something is definitely wrong, that in this particular case he's not jumping at shadows.

There's what the feelings mean and then there's what the words mean, which is that Todd is furious with him, still, for lying, that Todd never really did forgive him, that he _still_ hasn't told the whole truth and what little of it he has managed to get across is too much, actually. And there is a gulf opening up all around him and under his feet and Todd has stopped yelling and it is very quiet and he is very much alone.

He's not sure what he says to get him out of the room. He moves down the stairs, across the street, walks blindly until he's too far from Todd to hear/feel/sense anything, and then he relaxes his guard, lets the whole crashing wailing psychic mass of the universe crash over him, dash him against the rocks, throw him around until he can't think or feel or see. 

He scans the city, the country, the universe for where he's supposed to be and finds nothing, nobody, nowhere.


End file.
